


Say to This Mountain, Go

by gallinule



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Bickering Old Marrieds, Crisis of Faith, Doubt, Eadu, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, First Time, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 18:40:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9337949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallinule/pseuds/gallinule
Summary: “You never used to like to sit so far behind me,” Chirrut said.“There was less to watch out for, then."Left alone on the downed ship on Eadu, Baze and Chirrut force themselves to process what happened in Jedha City, to confront what the future holds, and to witness just how much the years have changed them both.





	

“This rain,” Chirrut said, exasperated, “is _loud.”_

Baze grunted. The escape from Jedha had already battered the hull before they crashed through Eadu’s cliffs. Now the storm poured over the broken ship relentlessly. The sound was no better than hundreds of metal ball casings rapping against the tin. 

Water wasn’t supposed to smell like anything. But the atmosphere made the planet smell like damp and mold, rot seeping in through cracks in the hull. The open hatch to the outside let the wind whirl in whenever it wanted, and the rain left puddles on the ramp. 

Sloppy. Stupid. He figured there were two types of rebels: the ones who saved every pinch of fuel, repaired their ship like the peddlers of Jedha used to treat their pack animals. With respect. Knowing your livelihood was found on their back. And then there were rebels who flashed hot and bright, ate resources like fire and discarded them when burned out. Different measure of potential. Baze couldn’t tell which kind these were yet. (From the way the droid banged on the machinery in the cockpit and muttered, “I _never_ get to go anywhere,” he had a guess.)

Jyn had fled the ship after Cassian and the pilot--the droid was burning out their communications before they left the downed craft for another stolen vessel. In the meantime, the two of them were left sitting like boulders. 

Chirrut drummed his fingers against his staff before folding them over the wood. Every move was disguised as deliberate. 

“We won’t be here long,” Baze said. Chirrut’s restless moods never ended well. 

He checked the cartridges on his laser cannon. Jedha was desert, dry heat and wind to score skin from bone, and he didn’t want any surprises with new atmosphere on Eadu. Humidity could warp the barrel, rust the fittings. He built the gun himself, he _knew_ it’d be fine, but they were sitting like statues here, waiting for moss to grow over them in a thick pelt. 

It took him longer to do it than normal. Focus escaped him. His fingers moved sluggishly. 

Ever since they’d been turned out of the temple, idleness lurked over his shoulder. A shadow, opening his insides like a book and paging it through it at will. Too easy to laze and wait for something to happen. Better to make sure his armor was strapped tight enough and his gun was loaded for when he started walking forward. _The Force knows._ Chirrut’s voice, inside his head from an old argument. 

Bah. The Force had its heart ripped up by the root in Jedha, and carted away piece by piece to Imperial bidders. He’d been younger, once. Bull-headed. Brave. The Force wasn’t. If the Force knew anything, it chose to sit still instead of standing up. He wouldn’t be caught flat-footed next time. If he was given a next time. 

“It’s constant.” Chirrut had a way of bristling like a cat--a little roll of his shoulders as he stretched his back ramrod-straight. Nobody at the temple would have called it _fidgeting_ , but Baze knew exactly what it meant. This, and the complaining--all nervous tics. Chirrut had them, like any other human, even if he didn’t want them seen. Baze watched him arch his neck a little, and then Chirrut said, “No room to think in between the sounds. The desert was quieter.” 

_The desert is gone._ “Now you know how we all feel,” Baze muttered wryly. “I’d take the rain over the praying. Any day.” 

He _tut-tutted_ under his breath. His face, always framed in contentment, held the tired shadow of a smile. “Surely you’re not saying I’m as loud as the storm.” 

“Nonstop,” Baze reminded him. “Like a hammer.” 

“You never used to mind before.” 

“I mind now.” 

Baze didn’t intend the sharpness, but there was no taking it back. The deep wrinkle between Chirrut’s brow furrowed, and didn’t go away. Instead he took a breath, and began his meditations. Prayers, dropping from his mouth as a shield against the sounds of the weather outside. 

Chirrut always prayed at the same rate charges blasted out of his cannon. But no good comparison existed in Baze’s memory. It had its own rhythm, its own pace. Chirrut prayed as Chirrut prayed. No automatic weapon could hold a light to its steadfast consistency. Even when they were young, less wrinkles, and looked less like the degraded holograms of a better time, he’d prayed like that. 

Their brethren regarded it as an odd little joke when they were training, but it evolved into more of a legend. Baze had told a pilgrim once, one who wrinkled his nose at Chirrut’s meditation in the temple-- _You think the universe doesn’t know? You can’t count for anything on Jedha, not even the stars. The sun rises and sets on Chirrut’s prayers._

Chirrut finished a cycle, and somehow interrupted himself. “This reminds me of the first night,” he said, his head angling towards the open hatch. 

Baze sighed. “Which one?” An honest question. Between them, there were enough first nights for a handful of people. 

He considered it. “More similar than they seem, eh? That was fifteen years ago, now.” 

So Chirrut meant to distract them with the past. _That_ first night. 

He fiddled with grooves in the metal at one end of his staff. “The sun, setting. You still wore those metal beads in your hair.” Chirrut had liked to worry them between his fingers; Baze sold them long ago for extra rations, hadn’t thought of them since. 

He would bite, if prayer wasn’t enough to keep Chirrut’s focus, and groaned at the memory of his efforts. “I spent so much time trying to find the right spot.” 

“You did well, considering.” Chirrut rolled his neck from side to side. “Quiet place. No one around. How you found somewhere secluded that wasn’t infested with desert worms, I’ll never know.” 

“Two weeks,” Baze said, right on cue, and Chirrut smirked. It was an old story. “Two weeks, till I found a spot that if we pretended hard enough, it might pass as a temple pallet.”

“Rocks and moss,” Chirrut recalled, his voice almost sing-song. “Sand, everywhere.”

It had to be said. “Small price to be alone.” 

Two weeks worth of planning to escape from the eyes of their fellow guardians, to take a breath from standing watch in the temple. In the future, it wouldn’t matter--privacy and time would diminish into _not caring even a little_ , but then, just once, Baze had wanted their solitude. They’d earned it. Chirrut had, anyway. 

“You made all the excuses. _What a prince he is_ , I thought. But so shy.” 

“Well,” said Baze. 

“You stopped talking completely. Completely!” And then he grinned. “But I wrestled that out of you soon enough.” 

Baze snorted. “Wrestled? You jumped on me like a smuggler’s net. I had no chance.” 

“You never did.” 

Baze did not allow himself to dwell on the past, not anymore. At the temple, time had been a circle. A routine of days without beginning or end. What existed was duty, the Force, their work. From it sprouted their family. Brothers, sisters, and the rest. His life, their lives together. Everything as he knew it, and wanted it to be. Nothing else to need. A world, simple and entire. 

That had been the problem, once the temple had fallen. Baze, once the most devoted guardian of them all, had not been dedicated to the Force alone, but to the great temple, and the people in it. Without them, the Force was not enough. 

It had been a long time since he thought of them together, that first night. But in came back in sharp color and heat, so vivid he could feel the wind brushing against his cheek. The coarse nap of the blanket under them. How his legs trembled under him. His hands shook so badly he’d balled them into fists to hide the tremors, and they’d vibrated up his arms and shoulders instead. 

But it was when his voice left him that Chirrut had taken matters into his own hands. Baze was the guardian who could haul the most, heaviest arms, a chest like a water barrel. But anyone could be big. Chirrut moved like the wind, muscle on muscle, lean and strong. He’d pinned Baze to the blanket and kissed him again and again, until Baze was convinced it was just a substitute for his muttered mantras. But he had no desire to go. 

_Don’t be afraid_ , Chirrut murmured against his lips, his long, slender fingers stroking through Baze’s hair. Baze kept it tied back in the hottest months, and Chirrut unwound the leather like it was gold thread. Then he tangled his hands in it, wrapping the locks around his palm. He did it so deliberately. Measuring each inch like Baze had seen peddlers do in the marketplace, like it was silk, and it was his. 

He didn’t know what to do with that, then. His answer was gruff. _I’m not_ , he muttered. _Just--new._ As though to prove it, he stuck his hands to Chirrut’s hips and squeezed once. He received a rough chuckle in response, sweet and amused, and Baze could feel it all the way from Chirrut’s belly to his mouth, nibbling along his jaw. 

_New_ , he repeated. _Like clay._ He pulled up the hem of Baze’s robes, his hands sliding over his belly. Over ridges of muscle, and softness. Chirrut’s hands were warm, callused and rough as wood. And strong. Baze could have reared up, but he was pinned to the ground as Chirrut felt each rib, slid two fingers up the line of his sternum, pinched one of Baze’s nipples lightly. 

Baze could not breathe. He was hard as stone already, anyway, and had always thought--it would be quick. Things between men were quick and hot, like the flash from a powder keg. _Are you trying to shape me?_ he asked

Chirrut laughed at that, and they were so close the sound vibrated between them. His fingers slid up to his neck, stroking the tendons reverently. One of Baze’s hands clutched his hip for dear life, his thumb digging in, but the other hand fell to claw the blanket under them. Chirrut examined his throat, running his fingertips along the line of his neck to his clavicle. 

_If you want me to._ Chirrut’s voice was serious. He stroked the bob of Baze’s throat with his thumb. 

He thought he might die. _Chirrut, touch me._

 _I_ am _touching you._ That wry grin. 

_Please_ , Baze said, and how still Chirrut went at that word, how he recognized it in both body and soul as what they both knew it was: prayer. And not even Chirrut could hold fast to his legendary patience.

“If it weren’t for those pilgrims exploring the ridge, it would have been perfect,” Chirrut said with a sigh, before Baze’s thoughts could spiral too far down. “We tried so hard to keep quiet.” 

Six pilgrims, climbing the rock face that hid them. Baze, cutting off a moan into Chirrut’s mouth with a harsh gasp that hurt his throat; Chirrut shuddered, went still above him. They’d been rutting into their linked fingers, cocks sliding messily against one another, and frozen when the sound of scrabbling was heard overhead. He heard the yell: _You can see the temple from up here! Look at that sunset._ And had exhaled his disappointment under his breath, all his bones going stiff. 

They made it three minutes before Chirrut started rolling his hips again anyway, and nearly killed Baze with the effort required to keep his jaw shut. He made his rough fingers circle them tighter. His skin prickled with gooseflesh. It was so slow, and every movement rippled through him like an electric current. _Let them hear you,_ Chirrut murmured into his ear. _Let them--oh, like that--let them be jealous of me._

“They weren’t exploring,” he corrected. “They were lost.”

“No one is ever lost on a pilgrimage. You know the destination, even if you don’t know the way.” 

“Bah.” Baze turned over his gun, tightened a screw. “A lot of fancy words when you just need one. _Lost._ ”

Chirrut waved his hand dismissively, and then sat still. Baze watched his nostrils flare as he inhaled. Sniffing the wet, mineral smell of the storm as it came through. “And after all that. The rain.” 

One of Jedha’s uncommon downpours. They’d walked home through it, soaked through the skin, Baze unable to stop smiling, hooking his arm around Chirrut’s waist as they lumbered through the puddles. When the moon was high, and with his permission, he lugged him over his shoulder. Chirrut had laughed in a way that echoed across the empty spaces of the desert. Filled everything with light. 

_Did I ever tell him that?_ Baze wondered suddenly. Did he know how he heard the echoes of that sound even now? A raw feeling opened up in his chest, like the burn of a blaster wound. No. How would he even start?

“Talk about something else,” he said then, before he could mutter something he’d regret. The memory cut him open along the sternum, and it was only his will that kept all his insides from spilling out. Years ago. Lifetimes ago. 

“Why?” asked Chirrut. 

“It’s a good memory.” Simple truth. “Don’t sully it by bringing it up in this place.” 

Chirrut snorted. “You give our circumstances so much power.” 

“You don’t give them any,” Baze said. “But that’s no surprise.” 

“And what do you mean by that?” He cocked his head just so to the side. “Should I be like you, and lose my faith when it is no longer useful?”

He ground his back teeth. “No,” he said. “But it’s not the reason either of us are alive.” 

“Speak for yourself.” 

It was like other arguments, but--Chirrut’s voice changed, just as the last moment. It hitched, as though he had to take a breath in the center of the statement to steady himself. He went back to running his thumb over the grooves in his staff. 

Baze could remember how Chirrut sounded once, and knew his voice had changed, just as his prayers had changed. Anyone who hadn’t been listening to Chirrut their whole lives wouldn’t know the difference. But the tenor of his voice had gone thin. A little hoarser, a little softer. The urgency of his chant, just a hair faster. To impress upon the universe, and himself, all his might convictions were utterly unshaken. _I am one with the Force. The Force is with me._

The difference between them was Chirrut believed they were being tested, and Baze believed they were fleeing from wreckage. Chances either of them were right, wrong, or both, numbered about even. 

There was no silence, with the rain beating down. Baze thought of empty spaces, and how long and far they seemed to stretch. 

“So this is about Jedha City,” Chirrut said. 

He grunted. “If you want it to be.” 

There was a long pause before he asked, “Do you feel different, Baze?”

He didn’t answer. He had no desire to peel this open like the skin of a rotting pack animal while an Imperial droid tried to realign their communication systems so they all didn’t get bombed off the face of the planet. He unbuckled the fuse line from his cannon, cleaned the rivets, and screwed it back in. 

“Baze?”

“It’s gone,” he muttered. “I don’t know what there is to talk about. It was gone long before it ever blew up.” Not the people, but the heart of the place. 

“Well--”

“There’s no _use_ , Chirrut.” Baze never meant to raise his voice, but if Chirrut wanted to drag a confession out of him, it wouldn’t happen. He could tell he meant to do it--why they’d been tiptoeing on eggshells ever since they’d been left alone in the wreck, and he could read all Chirrut’s little anxieties like they were his own. “Don’t pick at me because you need something to do.” 

It was rude, unfair--but Baze didn’t need to be the object of Chirrut’s restless energy, a bone to gnaw, a broken rivet to fix. They were stuck, and far from home, and without anything, and--

“I feel different,” Chirrut said, and all the air slipped out of the hold. 

Baze dropped his cannon. It slid out of his fingers, and he snatched it from the air just in time before it clattered on the metal floor. Chirrut sat deadly still, as though nothing had changed. 

It was not that Chirrut never changed. It was the way his voice softened on the last word. Disbelief. And doubt. 

Baze did not know what to do. For a long time he’d become accustomed to shouldering the non-believer’s mantle while Chirrut pressed on towards an unattainable future. It balanced them. But it meant Baze was always the rock, and Chirrut was the inescapable, unlimited desert wind, trying to wear him down. This was--

He should say something. He should. He managed Chirrut’s name. 

“I--” Chirrut began, stopped, and tried again. His fingers uncurled before tightening into fists. “I do not feel like myself.”

Baze forgot the droid banging around in the cockpit, forgot the laser cannon he was holding, forgot the torrent beating the downed ship. He set his weapon down and stood up, knees creaking, and ambled over to Chirrut’s side. He sat down next to him, carefully leaving a thumb’s width of room. It was their routine. After a breath, Chirrut closed the gap, scooted in so their legs pressed together. 

Chirrut exhaled once they touched. Even in the cells under Jedha, they hadn’t sat so close. He could not remember the last time it happened. 

“You never used to like to sit so far behind me,” Chirrut said. 

“There was less to watch out for, then,” Baze answered. 

“Ha.” But the noise was humorless. 

Silence, and not the comfortable kind Baze liked to steep himself in. He didn’t know what to ask. But Chirrut found a way through. That, at least, was steadfast as ever. 

“I keep thinking of the question I asked you.” 

Baze thought back. “You mean--” 

“‘Is it gone, Baze?’” Chirrut repeated. “‘Is it all gone?’” 

“Mm. I remember now.” 

“My mind thinks it didn’t hear you.” Chirrut carefully slid his staff to his side. “Maybe your words got lost in the wind, or I didn’t understand. Or because I can’t see for myself, I don’t know the lie for what it was. Too many possibilities.” 

“But just one answer.”

Chirrut, ready to rebut. “There’s never just one answer, Baze--survivors somewhere, perhaps, or a patch of the surface not completely destroyed…” 

The words scratched at his heart. The sound of the rocks and debris chipping at the glass, chipping at every inch of the ship. Nearly swallowing them whole. The way the earth itself opened its mouth in a terrifying scream, and how close they were to being lost forever in it. Baze felt, for once, the planet itself had matched his ever-burning rage at what had happened to the temple, and the people, and this was grief, mourning from the land Jedha City stood on its entire life, letting loose its voice. 

They had taken everything. _Everything._

“There’s planet left, yes? Room to rebuild. Room to grow again what we’ve lost. There are--people, survivors, I know it. Not just us. Anything, anyone--” 

It was too much. He had to stop him. “‘Yes,’” Baze repeated, his words from the cockpit only hours before. They rung between them like a bell, and Chirrut fell silent instantly. ‘“It’s all gone.’”

Chirrut’s mouth closed, pressed into a firm line. 

Baze reached over, gently rested two fingertips on the back of Chirrut’s hand. Chirrut hated to be wrenched or moved without warning, even from Baze, and this, too, was part of their dance. Old as the grey hairs on their heads. Chirrut’s hand turned over at the touch, opened like a flower, and Baze threaded their fingers together. 

“This is what breaks you?” Baze asked. The words were blunt, but his tone was softer. Curious. “All of us, thrown from the temple, half of our brothers and sisters murdered, the Imperials running us bloody through the streets--”

“Different.” Chirrut bit the words out from between clenched teeth. “Very different.” 

“What did we lose,” Baze wondered aloud, “that wasn’t ripped from us years ago?”

The wind howled through Eadu’s atmosphere, slid inside the cockpit, and fluttered the edges of Chirrut’s robes. He squeezed Baze’s hand so hard the bones protested. But he did not shiver. 

“We could still go back,” Chirrut said, so simple and empty Baze’s throat closed on a hard knot. Hope, he thought. All these years, and all those prayers were just fuel for whatever tiny flame of possibility he kept nourished within. “We could. I knew it.” 

“Chirrut,” Baze said, and lifted the rough hand to his lips, “we were never going back.” 

Chirrut trembled once, a shudder that was almost violent. He pulled his hand away. For half a breath, Baze thought he would turn away, stand up, leave. 

But he didn’t. He reached for Baze instead. His hand carefully slid up along Baze’s jaw and turned his head. Pressed their foreheads together, swift and hard enough the knock rattled through their skulls. Chirrut rested against him, that tense hand lingering against his face. 

Baze was very still. The rock for Chirrut to lean upon. Listened to his breathing stutter, until it evened out, and his lungs inhaled and exhaled in perfect cadence. The rhythm of things were the same here as they were on Jedha. 

Chirrut, a mountain of faith always facing towards the sun. Immovable, but for his own will. Baze, the pilgrim at the base, unable to look away from the summit he would never reach. 

“There was the first night when we were young,” Baze heard himself muttering, slowly, as though they had all the time in the world, “and there was our first night out of the temple. Do you remember?” 

At the end of an exhale, Chirrut said, “Yes.” 

“We had nothing.” The Imperial troops had taken all of their weapons, even the ropes and beads they wore around their waists. There had been raids later, and they’d recovered some of it. Chirrut’s lightbow, some of Baze’s more innovative weaponry. But that first night--nothing.“I still don’t know how they let you keep your staff.” 

“Don’t you know? I fluttered my eyelashes.” Baze pinched his thigh, gently, and Chirrut flicked the offending finger with mirth enough to bruise. But then he grasped Baze’s hand again, his thumb rubbing over the scars dotting his knuckles, and took a breath. Stories required turns. A ritual old as they were. 

“We slept under a peddler’s counter, “ Chirrut recounted. “One of the marketplace stalls. The vendor who sold the tanned boots the pilgrims were always wearing.” 

“Yes,” said Baze, “because it was _pissing_ rain.” 

The citizens of Jedha had closed their doors to the guardians. He didn’t blame them. Who wanted to jerk the Imperial occupation around? They were going to haul the kyber out anyway. Better to pick a battle worth fighting. But the second they’d been turned out into the streets, the skies had opened up in downpour. 

“First of the year.” Chirrut’s thumbnail traced the veins along the back of his hand. “Mud, everywhere. Everywhere.” He made a noise under his breath. 

“Huddled like criminals on the run.” This memory, too, stung. “Hoping nobody stumbled across us. And I--” He started, paused. 

Chirrut nudged him a little with his nose. When Baze didn’t go on, he finished the sentence for him. Out of grace. “You were crying,” he said.

Yes. Baze had wept at the fall of the temple. 

“I thought it was the rain,” Chirrut said. He raised his hands, let his fingers trail through the short scruff of Baze’s beard. He had done the same that night, trying to understand why Baze was so silent. “And then you made a noise. I had never heard that sound before.” 

This was new. That night, Chirrut had touched him all over, looking for answers, or wounds, or both, and then folded him into his body, letting Baze press his face into his neck as though that was where all the world lay. Hot tears poured out of him. He’d held Chirrut so tightly he was afraid of bruising him. But Chirrut was strong, and held him just as tightly. 

There had been fingerprint marks along the skin of his shoulder the next day. Proof Chirrut had no intentions of letting go. 

But this. “What--” 

“Like a demon was trying to claw its way out of you,” Chirrut said, “but you wouldn’t let it escape. It would have killed you. But I heard it--trying.”

The sound of his faith shrivelling up and dying in his chest. His own soul, reaching out to join the others thrown to the winds. Any number of impossible things. He’d felt endless as a wasteland that night, and somehow in the morning he still lived, and that was probably because of Chirrut. 

Baze said nothing, because he himself didn’t know what it was. Chirrut found a mussed lock of hair hanging in his face, tucked it behind his ear. “You’ve always been so--contained,” he mused as he did it. “Impenetrable.” 

“Did it scare you?” Baze asked, without quite knowing why. 

Chirrut hummed a little under his breath. “I thought--I would do anything to keep you whole,” he said, after a moment. “You refused to break under the weight of grief, even as it fought for your heart. And while that heart is yours to hold, it is mine to protect.” 

Not for the first time, Baze wondered if Chirrut’s tooth-and-nail resolution to the faith was in spite of his own doubt. Because of it. 

“Not a half bad job.” His voice was coarse. “You did all right. I had you. I lived.” 

“Nonsense,” said Chirrut, clucking his tongue. “You had yourself.” 

They fell into silence, did not move. The wind sent a wave of cold rain spatter all over the floor. When Chirrut finally spoke, Baze felt it in his skin, a rumble through the forehead resting against his. 

“The Force is all around us,” he muttered. “Yet now it has no home. Even with the temple empty, it lived there still.” 

“So? Worse has happened.” 

“There is nowhere to _defend_ ,” Chirrut said, with such sudden passion he almost pushed Baze away. “I have--” 

Now Baze raised his hand,to stroke Chirrut’s fine jaw with the back of his finger. “It’s everywhere,” he said again, firmly. “Out in the air. In this stupid ship. Inside you. Protect that. Or find a new mission.” Preferably not this one, but that was looking less and less likely. 

“I can’t--”

Baze had no romantic way with words, couldn’t shape them into stitches like Chirrut could. The platitudes about guarding his heart--a duty Baze shared without ever articulating it aloud--were not in his arsenal. He could try, maybe. A waste of time. 

But he could keep him from dissolving under the weight of it. He could stop the doubts falling out of his mouth, by this universe that had proved an endless, unworthy disappointment. He could return the favor, given him long ago, when he broke into pieces under the canvas of a merchant’s stall, after everything he’d known had slipped away. 

He kissed Chirrut without any elegance--lips and tongue bluntly wielded, his hand sliding to cup the back of his neck. Perhaps if their noses mashed together hard enough, their molecules would begin to merge. Baze ducked his head to mouth the line of Chirrut’s throat uncovered by the collar of his robes. Chirrut’s muscles went lax, a little of the tension bleeding out of him, and Baze nipped at the apple of his throat. He made a sharp sound that was lost between them before seizing the front of Baze’s armor and yanking him up, as though to be closer was even possible, and crushing their mouths together. His hand buried itself in Baze’s hair, the tight fist dotting his scalp with tiny, bright points of pain. Baze couldn’t remember the last time anything felt that good, or real. It couldn’t have been so long ago. But Jedha City had erased the memory. 

He rucked up the skirts of Chirrut’s robes--they weren’t going rut like animals on a strange planet surrounded by Imperial troops, no matter how good of an idea it sounded right now, but he just needed--and worked his hand between cloth and armor until he could smooth his heavy hand across the hard plane of Chirrut’s stomach, slid his palm across his ribs. 

It made everything stop, just for a moment, as Chirrut sucked in a breath, long and slow, and shuddered. The hand in his hair tightened, and the kiss that followed was by no means gentle, but it took its time. If either noticed the staff clattering to the floor, they didn’t care. Touch became its own world, and for a moment--just one--they could afford to forget the rest. 

When air became an inevitability, he traced the pad of his thumb along Chirrut’s bottom lip. “Do whatever you want,” he muttered, finding his breath. “Believe whatever you want. You’ll go down the right path.” 

When Chirrut spoke, he could feel the air from his words slip past his finger. “How do you know?” 

“Because you’re Chirrut.” The answer seemed obvious. “It’s who you are. No other answers exist.” 

A moment of pause, before Chirrut took his wrist, kissed the cradle of his thumb where the grip of his weapon had worn a heavy callus. In a burst of energy, he turned from Baze and flicked his staff up from the floor with his foot. He seized it from the air and strode off through the empty hatch. 

Baze was on his feet and fumbling after him after half a second--he nearly slipped on a puddle, seizing the metal threshold for balance. He swore under his breath and called out, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“No more waiting. I’m following Jyn. Her path is clear.” Chirrut had already made it ten paces out into the rain and mud.

He snorted, looking out at the peals of rain, the high rock formations that littered the planet, and the soft red glow of the Imperial base in the distance. “Good luck.” 

Chirrut smiled, wide and full of light. “Please,” he scoffed. “I don’t need luck. I have you.” 

The gun, of course, was ready and waiting for his shoulder. He was on his feet. And Chirrut, already soaked through from the rain, would only give him the few seconds of delay their twenty years of partnership had earned him. _I count every second I’m willing wait for you_ , Chirrut had teased him once. He’d been standing at the foot of the temple steps, staff rapping a tattoo on the stone. A metronome. _Every year I add another, and it pains me._

“Come,” Chirrut demanded, interrupting his thoughts, a bellow that was accompanied by a hand on his hip. Rain streaked through his hair, drizzled down his neck. 

“Keep your robes tied.” Baze turned to find his gun. No sense in hesitation. Above them, the wind howled, and carried with it the sound of airships from far away. 

_Then go._ Baze retorted. _What do I care? You’ll be a tortoise when you’re old._ (He wouldn’t, and they both knew it.)

 _It pains me_ , Chirrut had amended, reached across the space between them to touch a finger to his brow, as good as a kiss, _but what a fine, fine pain._


End file.
